Tol Barad Honor Change + Bridge Exploit

Update - Added Cataclysm Hotfixes - Updated Jan. 3 at the bottom of the post, keeping the Tol Barad announcement on top a little more because of how ridiculously important it is.

Tol Barad Honor Change + Bridge Exploit
The good old days are over, sorry guys!

Originally Posted by Zarhym
(Blue Tracker)

As you’re probably aware by now, an update was applied to Tol Barad shortly before the holidays which granted the attacking side 1800 Honor Points for a victory. While the goal with that change was to provide more incentive for the attacking forces to claim victory, it ultimately led to an undermining of the spirit of competition in Tol Barad. We’ve just applied a hotfix which has lowered the attacking faction’s gain to 360 Honor Points for a victory. The defending faction will still earn 180 Honor Points for a victory.

We appreciate all of your feedback regarding this change. We'll continue working to make Tol Barad a fun and engaging PvP environment.

Whats the word on the bridge exploit?
We're working on a fix for this right now.

Update Cataclysm Hotfixes - Updated Jan. 3

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)

Here you will find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the release of patch 4.0.3a and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. While many have already been deployed on all realms, some may not be implemented until the next time your realm is restarted. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied.

The Strength bonus from the Retribution version of Guardian of Ancient Kings now applies its bonus based on total Strength instead of just base Strength.

Dungeons & RaidsBastion of Twilight

It was sometimes possible for Arion to instantly Chain Lightning the targets affected by Lightning Rod, with no time for them to react. This has been corrected.

If one of the three most distant targets from Ignacious was 20 or fewer yards away and Ignacious picked that target for Inferno Leap, the spell would fail entirely, but the cooldown would be consumed. Inferno Leap can now be cast on players 20 yards or fewer away from Ignacious.

The Elementium Monstrosity will now prefer ranged targets to melee targets with its Electrical Instability beams. If there are more beams active then there are ranged targets present, then the beams will start hitting melee targets.

Flame Destruction cast during the Cho'gall encounter now does approximately 30% more damage per stack on Heroic difficulty.

Blackwing Descent

Sonar Pulse is now spawned on top of Atramedes' current location and will spawn regardless of where Atramedes is tanked. In addition, Sonar Pulse now idles for 1 second after being cast before they move away from their spawn location.

It is no longer possible to use immunities to reset a player's sound bar while fighting Atramedes.

Atramedes' Sonic Breath now properly ignores line of sight.

Spirit of Ironstar's Shield of Light was taking too long to break and now absorbs less damage.

Deadmines

Divine Shield prevents all damage from the Sparks in the Mechanical Nightmare.

The Foe Reaper 5000 will not cast Harvest on players more than 70 yards away.

Grim Batol

Trogg Dwellers which cannot be reached by players via legitimate means no longer award experience or drop loot if killed.

Lost City of the Tol'vir

Lockmaw's Frenzied Crocolisks have learned how to swim! In addition, Vicious Poison was doing too much damage and has been reduced slightly.

Throne of the Four Winds

Players now receive credit for the achievements Heroic: Conclave of Wind or Throne of the Four Winds if they are dead when the encounter is defeated.

It is no longer possible to fully resist Wind Burst from Al'Akir, avoiding all damage and knockback.

Al'Akir's Static Shock has been changed from a damage-over-time spell with interrupts on ticks (10-second cooldown), to a direct-damage interrupt spell (5-second cooldown).

Items

Bloodthirsty and Vicious Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets had incorrect bonuses attached. Their bonuses now correctly reduce the cooldowns on regular traps and launched traps by 2 seconds.

Bloodied Wyrmhide Gloves no longer have any expertise rating on them, and now grant Spirit instead.

ProfessionsArchaeology

Select Archaeology nodes and dig sites have been updated to ensure the Map listings are correct and the nodes properly spawn within the dig sites.

Cooking

The cooking daily quest Chef's Awards no longer have a limit to how many players can hold at one time. Please note that the user interface will still say a maximum of 10 Chef's Award currency can be possessed until a client-side patch can be applied, but players can accrue more than 10.

Tailoring

Tailors with 400 skill or higher should now receive additional cloth drops 50% of the time from anything that drops cloth, up from 25%.

Now Blizzard needs to step up and balance the damn place instead of yanking around reward numbers -- considering that this simply makes TB ownership one-sided again.

They need to face it -- the 'win-trading' that servers had going on was essentially trying to emulate the ideal environment for Tol Barad: high ownership turnover so that both factions have ample opportunity to complete the daily quests and reap the other miscellaneous benefits.

Edit: ABOUT ****ING TIME about the Alliance Tol'Barad guards. Nothing infuriated me more about having 20 horde just standing around in your base, spamming emotes at you and standing on top of the quest NPCs and nothing being done about it. Also the whole "there's a giant group of Horde waiting to kill you in your own base as you attempt to leave TB after yet another failed attack" thing was ridiculous.

I can't believe it took them THAT LONG to fix that. Maybe Blizzard was just assuming reports about it was QQ due to the absolute ridiculousness of such a bug.

Figures - just a damn shame about the imbalance it created between those that got in and those that didn't. 30 honour for a 20 minute BG vs 1800 for a 5 minute TB? Ye, I know which is the easier way to pile on the PvP gear.

And the balancing problems remain unchanged. Fixing Tol Barad isn't that hard, set the attackers win conditions as taking all 3 towers for an instant win OR holding 2/3s of the towers when time expires to prevent the turtling defense strategy.